The story of the new century.
The Axiom award winner takes you inside the investigations of some of the largest crimes in history, those earlier echoes of the current generation of bank collapses.
Go deep into the action in this page-turner by Jared Bibler. You don’t know this story yet … but you will.
From Harriman House. Pick one up wherever good books are sold.
Is it any good?
You bet. And this tale has it all: insatiable greed, flamboyant crime, scheming politicians, dishpan-clanging housewives, and a Nordic noir backdrop. Readers call it a “revelation” and say it has changed how they see the world. You don’t know this story yet, but you will.
Why now?
Fifteen years after the crash, and with most of the criminal cases now through the courts, the story can be told at last and in full. The crisis, barely understood inside or outside of Iceland even today, is a cautionary tale for the world; an inside look at the high crimes that inevitably follow unbridled Wild West capitalism. And that are once more in our midst.
Who should read it?
This is a saga that leaves professionals in business and finance, along with the rest of us, shaking in our shoes. If you are a fan of the classics, books like Liar’s Poker, Barbarians at the Gate, The Smartest Guys in the Room, and Bad Blood, you will love Iceland’s Secret.
“For someone who thought he knew something about the Icelandic crisis, this book came as a real surprise. The degree of devastation, the brazenness of the criminality and the clear connections to the wider world all serve as a wake-up call. Iceland’s Secret sounds the alarm while also making for highly entertaining reading.”
— Haig Simonian, former correspondent to The Financial Times
“Do you think this could ever happen here?”
— one SEC staffer’s whisper to another, Washington, DC, 2017
“Do you think this could ever happen here?”
StaffER | US Securities and Exchange Commission, Washington DC
Why should I care?
Iceland is a small nation, with only around 350,000 people today. But it's still a country, with all of the trappings of larger places. It would be a grievous mistake to write off the Icelandic financial crisis as not more broadly relevant: Iceland is the world writ small, and hence a perfect laboratory by which to view the forces at work in larger nations. This crisis, hardly understood either inside or outside the country even today, is a cautionary tale for the world. The popular press holds up Iceland as a success story, but this naïve view of things is a sugar coating: empty calories designed to make a worried public feel as though all is OK. Despite the devastating events of 2008, the dragon of deeply corrupt financial markets has still not been slain, in Iceland or anywhere else. Iceland in 2006-2008 is a preview of coming attractions for the world’s big markets. Today we find ourselves back in the equivalent of the 1930s, thinking the Great War is over and done with, and yet an economic World War II looms on the horizon. We are sitting on a time bomb.
Curious?
